> From: Richard Light [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>
> Whilst the cyclical and often heated discussion of the social model goes
> on
> in academe, the very different perspective it allows from that offered by
> dominant ideology ensures that disabled people continue to welcome it and
> apply it on a regular basis.
[DJ] Richard, I agree. Most of the people I work with don't know
and could care less about the "social model." They're too busy fighting
local and personal battles. However, that doesn't invalidate what the
theorists and researchers are doing (see below).
... The danger is that the social model (as theory) will become so
> refined and bear so little resemblance to the social model as human rights
> device that the two become so fundamentally different as to be entirely
> alien.
[DJ] I think this danger is over-stated. Such discrepancies mean
very little to most of the folks showing up at city council meetings, state
legislative hearings, and doing all the other stuff that social change
requires.
> Consensus on these issues will never be unanimous because for all the
> academic's claim to 'objectivity', our views are heavily influenced by our
> politics. On that basis, I willingly concede that I am persuaded by
> materialist accounts and have no cause to reject such accounts in my day
> to
> day work.
[DJ] Of course our views are influenced by our politics, or as the
saying goes, "Where you stand depends on where you sit." I confess to
having no idea what your second sentence means.
... I do not reject your views, but I weep
> when I see an important social and political tool ascribed with
> characteristics that are alien to what I experience.
[DJ] Again, I don't understand your concern. You don't need the
social model or any other model to show decision-makers that their attitudes
toward people with disabilities are the real problem, or--citing a recent
case in my home town--to get liquor store clerks to understand that people
with CP can appear superficially to be drunk (they can at times actually be
drunk, but that's not the problem).
...
>
> I willingly defer to the huge intellects represented on the list but
> simply
> ask: 'do you stop to consider whether what you do benefits, harms or does
> absolutely nothing for disabled people?' Disabled people have been
> fighting
> the vested interests and arrogance of 'professionals' since they first
> sought to end the abuse of institutionalised 'care'. Might it be the case
> that the academic endeavours the movement spawned are now simply another
> barrier for disabled people to cross? Deeply ironic or what.
[DJ] Again, Richard, we part company. Academic research should not
be measured, in my non-academic opinion, by whether it benefits, harms, or
ignores current social movements. I'm not even sure that such movements
even need the help of academics, at least not in their professional roles.
What I am sure of is that scholarship needs to exist in an environment as
free from politics and popular opinion as possible. The danger, of course,
is that we behave like the old-time Soviets: measuring academic worthiness
by consistency with Marxist-Leninist theory.
-Dick Jacobs
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